Twinkle's Kitchen | Grilling salmon

I love grilling, and I love trying out new things to cook on the grill. For a long time, however, I shied away from cooking anything I thought might fall apart to avoid any unwanted failure.

Honestly, trial and error is the best way to learn how to cook. I’ll admit I’ve cooked a few things I’ll never live down, but the amount of dishes I’ve created that rendered eaters speechless with joy outweighs the food flops by a wide margin.

This is why for a long time I would not grill fish unless it was in foil or on a grill pan. Thankfully I gave in and threw all caution to the wind. It was one of the best things I have ever done.

There are rules, or “best practices” if you will, for grilling fish that can keep you from picking shreds of food out of your grill, or burning it to a crisp.

You’ll want to start off by preheating your grill. We use gas, so these rules apply to gas grills only.

Preheat your grill with the top closed on the highest heat for about 15-20 minutes.

I took this leisure time to prep other things for our meal and to make the grill rub/glaze I wanted to use on the fish. In this case, we had some fresh Wild Salmon.

I think salmon is a perfect fish for grilling because of its density and thickness. Thinner filets are more difficult to cook straight on the grill because they tend to cook too fast.

What you’ll need:

4-5 2” thick Wild Salmon filets

Grill Glaze Recipe:
½ cup honey
½ olive oil
¼ cup soy sauce
about 1” section of chopped fresh ginger root
6-7 cloves of fresh garlic
1 tsp. Twinkle’s grill rub – click for recipe
Juice of two limes
2 tbs. pear preserves (You can use peach or mango or other fruit if you like.)

-Mix everything together in a medium bowl EXCEPT the ginger and garlic and the fish.

-Place the garlic and the ginger in a food processor and drizzle one tablespoon of the mixture on top

-Process until garlic and ginger are mushy.

-Add the garlic-ginger mush back to the bowl and mix with the other “glaze-rub” ingredients.

-Brush the top side of your salmon, or other fish, with this and place inside the fridge until you are ready to put them on the grill.

By the time you’ve finished all this, you should be ready to check the grill. Be prepared -the heat is going to leap out at you when you lift the grill cover.

Leave one burner on high and turn the others down to low.

Brush grates with oil and place the fish skin-side up on the hottest grate.

Cook about one minute and flip over, closing the lid and cooking about 4-5 minutes more.

Make sure the cooler grates are still well-oiled, then move the fish over to those to finish cooking – about two minutes. 

*Brush your filets with the glaze each time you flip or check. This gets the good, good flavor into the fish and lets the honey crisp up the top.

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Twinkle VanWinkle was born in a small town in Mississippi. A life-long lover of music, media and food, she grew up following those three things along her path. She has almost 20 years of professional cooking under her apron strings, feeding thousands of friends, family and other folks while working in restaurants and bakeries in Oxford, Miss. She baked 300 apple pies for the “Oprah Winfrey Show” and appeared on “The Best Of...” in the same year. Along with producing dynamic entertainment content for LIN Media, she is a mother, musician and social media fanatic.

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